


All These Scars Show

by annegirlblythe



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: And a kickass Quidditch player, Charlie is a good brother, F/M, Gen, Ginny has an A+ support system, Ginny is gorgeous, Hospitals, Quidditch Injuries, Ron is too, St. Mungo's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 14:19:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11209815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annegirlblythe/pseuds/annegirlblythe
Summary: Ginny takes a Quaffle to the face, and reflects on her family and the meaning of scars. Harry, Ron, and Hermione are there to help.





	All These Scars Show

**Author's Note:**

> "All these scars show is zat my husband is brave!" - Fleur Delacour, HPB.

When Ginny wakes up, she’s in a bed she doesn’t recognize, and her entire face hurts, but her three favorite people in the world are sitting together against the ugly curtain within her reach, so that’s alright, then. It strikes her how panicked she should be and isn’t, waking up in a hospital bed. She supposes it speaks to how often she and her family end up here, how normal St. Mungo’s feels. It almost makes her smile. 

The clock on the wall opposite reads 9:45. The last time she remembers seeing was the time-out from her match around 2 o’clock. She wonders if she’s been asleep that long, or just hasn’t checked her watch in as many hours. 

Ron is the first one to notice that her eyes have opened, and his face splits into a grin. “Gin!” he says, and stands to hover over her. Harry and Hermione smile, too, and Harry comes over to drop a kiss on her forehead. “How’re you feeling?” he asks, taking her hand. 

“Like shit,” she answers, as jokingly as she can manage. He grins at her, and she remembers why dating Harry is so bloody easy. He’s not panicking. She doesn’t either, when it’s him hurt, and it takes so much stress out of everything. 

Hermione perches lightly on the edge of Ginny’s St. Mungo’s bed. “You remember what happened?” She looks as though she’s going to do the panicking for all them, but Ron puts a hand on her shoulder as if to keep her from spilling over. 

Ginny blinks, and tries to think of the last thing she can remember. All that pops into her head is a crashing pain against her face. “Um. Colette got me in the face with the Quaffle, didn’t she? Damn her, damn their whole team.” 

“It was from your own team, actually,” Hermione corrects, gently. Harry sits down next to Ginny on the bed, still holding her hand. Ron drags the chair he’d been sitting in a few feet away and sits down closer, knees touching the hospital bed. “It was Morgan, he’s downstairs and feels awful about the whole thing.” 

Ginny nods, but the effort hurts. She makes a note not to jostle her face again. “And I fell and they brought me to St. Mungos?” 

“How can you keep playing that game when you know this is seconds away at any given moment, Ginny, it scares the shit out of me, it really does,” Hermione says, and Ginny can’t tell if tears are imminent, but God she hopes not. She always cries when Hermione cries and her face hurts too much for that. 

Harry squeezes her hand. “Healers said you’re gonna be fine. You took it straight to the face and shattered a couple of bones, but they’ve mostly fixed it.” 

A cold dread seeps into Ginny, and she looks at Ron, who will least be able to hide the answer from her. “Mostly?” 

Ron shrugs. “You look fine, Gin. There’s some scarring, but they should be able to get rid of that, too.” 

Scarring, Ginny thinks, and sighs. “Can I see?” 

Hermione and Ron share the look....the one they always give each other when Harry does something stupid, and she understands the annoyance it’s always been for him. She looks up at Harry instead, who kisses her fingers and says, “I can go get the Medi-witch. She’ll let you see and give you the options for the different spell workups. They'll either give you a potion, or do a reconstruction. What's the name of that thing, Hermione?"

"A cosmetic episkey," Hermione answers. 

Ginny nods, and Harry gives her hand a final squeeze before standing up and stepping out of the curtained area around her bed. 

“Does it hurt?” Hermione asks, and even though Ginny knows she’s trying to be the adult here, trying to sound authoritative and reassuring, the question still sounds small and childish. As much as the four of them know about pain, talking about it like this still feels like talking into a void. It’s what happens when you spend your formative years in a war - you become an adult who doesn’t want things to hurt anymore. She’s the same way, but it’s disconcerting in someone as indestructible as Hermione. 

“It hurts,” Ginny answers, deadpan. “My face feels like it’s been hit full on with a Quaffle. Oh, wait.” 

Ron smirks, and says, “You know they only gave you a Dreamless Sleep draught because you were making too much noise for them to fix your face properly, right?” Ginny kicks him, trying not to laugh, but Hermione continues to look concerned. 

“Anyone else here?” Ginny asks, instead of reassuring her friend. She wonders if there’s a waiting room full of Weasleys who will all want to see for themselves that she’s alive and well. She hopes not. God. Getting hurt is embarrassing enough, but having her family fuss like they do over injuries from things more important than Quidditch sounds like more than she can bear right about now. 

“Just the bloke from your team. Percy came by for a bit to see if he needed to yell at any Healers for you, but he left when he saw you were going to be alright. Didn’t want to crowd you when you woke up. I’ll owl him after the Medi-witch tells you you’re alright,” Hermione answers too-fast, running her hands over Ginny’s blanketed legs as if trying to neaten up the stress of the day. 

“We didn’t want to worry everyone after they said at the pitch you’d be alright,” Ron says, and Ginny is grateful that she and her brother are practically the same person on matters such as these. “Percy only came because he was at the match. Saw you fall. Should’ve seen the look on his face, Gin, it was a sight to behold.” 

“Come on, mate, you screamed like you didn’t know the pitch was charmed to catch her,” Harry chimes in, returned with a vaguely familiar Medi-witch in tow. She’s cute, and   
Ginny thinks she remembers her name being Ryanne. She’d been a year younger than Ginny at school...and maybe a Slytherin? 

“Ms. Weasley,” the blonde Medi-witch says with a kind smile. “You lot are half our medical records.” 

Ron smiles. “Couple of Aurors, couple of pro-Quidditch players, and a dragon crazy git will do that to a hospital ward.” 

“Alright, Ms. Weasley, you know what happened?” 

“Yeah,” Ginny answers. “I just want to know about the scarring?” 

The Medi-witch pulls a mirror off of the top of her clipboard and hands it to Ginny, who immediately looks at her face. 

Her skin is as freckled as ever, her eyes as brown as they’ve been in every other mirror, but her nose is crooked, and a thick red line next to her top lip. 

She stares intently, vaguely aware that Ryanne or Raelynn or whateverhernameis is talking, but… 

“Do you need a minute?” Harry asks, the first voice she’s been able to process and again, Ginny is so grateful for him. She nods, tearing herself away from her reflection. The Medi-witch is gone, and the three of them stand up to leave, Hermione taking Ginny’s hands first, squeezing her bracingly. “If you need anything, we’re right outside, okay?”

“She knows, Hermione,” Ron says, pulling his girlfriend gently by the elbow. Realizing he’d been harsh to a girl who’d spent the last several hours unconscious, he glances at his sister. “S’true, though. And if you don’t want this wreck, just ask for me and Harry, we won’t swarm you like -” 

“Careful,” Hermione interrupts, only half joking, and Ron stops talking, his expression unremorseful as he looks at Ginny. She loves these three people more than she can ever imagine loving anyone. 

With her time alone, though, she can stare into the Mediwitch’s hand mirror at the new constitution of her face. There’s something….charming about the scars, even as objectively ugly as they are. Maybe scars are more positively connotated for her than they are for most people, for all the people she looks up to have important ones. Harry and Hermione’s scars show the odds they’d beaten, shows them both marked and triumphant, while Ron, Bill and George have scars from their bravery, all gotten in battles, all earned protecting their loved ones. 

Does she deserve scars like theirs, from something as trivial as Quidditch? Does she deserve to match them? She stares intently at the mirror, analyzing how different she looks with a crooked nose, the angry red line swinging upwards from her top lip. She’s always thought of herself as strong, badass, and charming outside and unconnected to her body. Not that she’s not a bodily being - she is - just that her best features aren’t part of that.

Does she want her face to look the way it’s always looked as if one Quidditch match hadn’t happened? The match is part of her now, like everything she’s ever fought for. By the same token, shouldn’t the more important things she’s fought for - her own soul, her classmate’s lives, her boyfriend’s heart - be the things to mark her? 

She’s still staring at her face when the ugly curtain shifts again and Charlie enters, smiling good-naturedly. “Hey, baby sister,” he says, and she pulls a face, though she likes that Charlie can still the bitter thing she has become as a baby. “How ya feeling? It’s good to see ya.” 

“About like I did when I had to garden by myself for year. Except. Physically. And concentrated in my face.” 

Charlie laughs, loud and bright, and drops down into the chair Ron had vacated. They talk for a few minutes, comfortable and easy. She recaps the game as she remembers it, and he tells how it ended with her substitute. 

“You look badass, by the way,” he says casually, after they’ve exhausted the topic of Quidditch. 

“Harry said you’re trying to decide whether or not to keep them.” 

“What do you think?” Ginny asks, because she’ll never not be his little sister. Ron and George, she can see as her equals and friends, but Bill and Charlie and Percy will always be authority figures. 

“Well, it’s definitely up to you,” Charlie answers, unhelpfully. He pushes his sleeves up, revealing strong forearms and laced through with old scratches and burn marks. “But I rather like scars. And I know Harry and Bill and them got theirs by being brave or whatever. But there’s no same in wearing scars from doing what you love.” 

What I love, Ginny thinks. “Did Hermione The Secret Legilimens call you?” she asks, instead of replying. 

Charlie chuckles, and shakes his head. “I heard the recap of your game on the wireless and came on my own. But she filled me in downstairs. For the record, Ron thinks you should keep your face as pretty as possible for as long as possible.” 

Ginny grins, and takes one last look in the hand held mirror she’d set down when Charlie arrived. “Pretty’s overrated.” 

Her scars aren’t only binding her to her loved ones - they bind her to her passion, too. They bind her to every moment she’s ever lived, whether or not it left a mark on her skin, and she finds she really likes that idea.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm harryjamesheadcanons on tumblr!


End file.
